Kenya Court Orders Secret China Railway Contracts Released

The China and Africa podcast is supported in part by our subscribers and Patreon supporters. If you'd like to join a global community of readers for daily news and exclusive analysis about Chinese engagement in Asia, Africa, and throughout the development world, go to ChinaGlobalSouth.com/Subscribe. China in Africa podcast, a proud member of the Cynica podcast network, America, Lander, and as always, I'm joined by CGSP's Africa editor, Jiro Nima joining us again from the beautiful island of Mauritius back from Smaggy Beijing. We're going to get some insights again from his trip to Beijing because there's a lot of interesting kind of tidbits that you picked up along the way. First, we're going to talk about a very important court case that came down of the Court of Appeals in Kenya regarding the loan contracts for the Standard Gage Railway. We're also then going to quickly touch on Jiro's insights on a dispute between Niger and Benin on a pipeline. There was a big signing this week and we'll get an update from him on that. Let's start in Kenya. Again, a massive ruling came down from the Court of Appeals. Let me just walk through everything and what was so interesting was how this is a very important ruling that got no attention. The Court of Appeals ruled again. This is a 10-year Odyssey here for the government to release the loan contracts for the Standard Gage Railway. Let me give a little bit of background to set up our conversation here. On 2015, the Kenyan government borrowed about $5 billion from the China Exam Bank to build the Standard Gage Railway that now goes from Nivasha and the Rift Valley all the way to the Port of Mombasa. Huge infrastructure project happened right at the peak of BRI spending, but the contracts for those loans were secret. Now, let's remember that Kenya has in its constitution a clause that says all procurement contracts must be made public. And for the longest time, the administration of Uru Kenyatta did not release the contracts. Now remember that the current president William Ruta was in the government at the time. Okay, in 2019, so four years later, two activists from Mombasa take the government to court and win and say to the High Court of Mombasa and the High Court of Mombasa says, "Yes, this needs to be released." We don't have anything that's released at that after that. Then we get into the presidential campaign that is ramping up in 2021 and William Ruto says, "If I am elected, I am going to release the Standard Gage Railway contracts." He gets elected in 22, no contracts. The government then takes the court case that they lost in 2019 back to the court of appeals and says, "These contracts are not subject to the constitutional requirement for transparency because they are not standard procurement contracts. They are contracts between two governments. If we release these contracts, it will harm our foreign relations with China. It will disclose state secrets. And because these contracts are between the Kenya Railways Authority, KRA, which is a state entity and the China Exam Bank, which is another state entity, the government has the right to seal that." That's what we got a ruling this week, which said, "No, the government did not prove its case that says that this is a matter of national security to keep these contracts secret and they must release them." That's where we are. Now, Jiro, what's interesting is that this is been for 10 years, a huge new story in Kenya. Front-page news. This has been the origin of a lot of the debt trap narratives that we've heard going back 10 years now. This has been a big, big story. And it landed this week like a thud. Only Business Daily, which is a financial newspaper, had it on the front page, no national television coverage, no discussion on social media, nothing. Give me your impression of why you think it is that such an important story did not resonate with the public. I think it's been too long. I think a lot of time I've passed since the SGA was built and a lot of narratives also have happened. People had to experience the SGA themselves for the good or the bad, for the worse or for the better, whatever. But they'd experience it. There's also a lot of things happening right now in Kenya in terms of social issue, all forms of issue that can really take attention from this kind of story. And when that was a thing to you know, people can mobilize around the SGR and the transparency and the contract, I think today it became just one of those many cases that people are going to say, you know what, we've always been telling you that William Ruto administration is corrupt, that everything he says is not really following through, so that's not really a surprise. I do believe that there is that kind of fatigue, not specifically around about Chinese project in Kenya, but just that kind of fatigue around all social issues, those kind of issues that people need social civil society and opposition needs to mobilize against the government and really trying to get anything done about it. So in this case here, just because we have not, because we have that kind of fatigue, I believe that despite the court decision, I'm not sure there'll be enough political pressure or social pressure to get this contract released and to even then to be to have full transparency on what was said and what's in there. But since we know the impact, because it was about using taxpayer money to reimburse and the management of fund, we also know the crisis that William Ruto faced himself with the young with the youth three years back when he was about the financial bill. We kind of understand that when everything that comes with taxpayer money in Kenya, it's something quite sensitive, it's quite something quite serious. So without real political pressure, I'm not for seeing William Ruto administration releasing this contract and making them public. So two things on this. Number one is that the president soon after he came to office released part of the contract, but not the full contract, which again indicates that there's got to be something in this contract that both former president Kenyatta and current president Ruto do not want the world to see. I mean, they have been determined for 10 years. This is on par with Donald Trump's tax returns. I mean, when you're that determined not to release it to the public, something has got to be in there. I would be very surprised if we see these contracts. And it's just, well, that's it. And because of that, the really opening space for wild speculation, speculation that can really be like, you know, what's in there? I mean, what are you hiding? Have you sold the country? Because it can be a very simple narrative, you know, Ruto and Urukayet and Ruto have sold the country. And this is something that's important. William Ruto was Urukayet, a vice president. He was just not in the administration. He was vice president of Urukayet. He was sent to this conversation. So when people say like, have you sold the country to the Chinese? And I think that they're making a mistake not to release it. Because outside Kenya, that kind of behavior is only fueling the kind of narrative that we've been hearing about Chinese contract on the continent in Africa and on the part of the global south. And I think that this lack of transparency and we should not be expecting at all Chinese to put pressure on K and to say do something. They would not do that. But that lack of transparency is just not serving Beijing interests. And this is why I think that at some point Beijing may be wondering, should we at some point maybe try to say, Kenyans, if there is nothing to hide on my part, I have nothing to fear about that. Maybe you should be releasing that because now my reputation is also on the line. It's not only about you. It's also China's reputation on the line. Well, yeah, you're not going to hear the Chinese say that, you know, I don't think you'll hear the Chinese say that. There are strict nondisclosure clauses in these contracts. And when you talk to experts and we've talked to many of the world's top experts on Chinese debt contracts, what they will tell you. And again, this is something that the critics don't want to hear. China is by far standard practice on and what they do. They are not an outlier when it comes to transparency. In fact, one of the top China debt experts in the world said, go ahead and find me a German loan contract and give me the details for it today. Go ahead, go online and find it. You won't. It's very hard. Now, they said that China is an outlier on the spectrum, but it is not outside and something exceptional and extraordinary. And I think that's a really important point here. You know, my guess is what's in the contract and hear me out here. This is what I think. Now, this was one of the earlier contracts that China did as part of the Belt and Road remember the Belt and Road comes into life about 2012, 2013. This contract's done about 2014, 2015. And my guess is that what they don't want to show is that this was very much a one-sided contract. The arbitration was a set in Hong Kong. The interest payments are much higher. The work crews were all Chinese. The cost to build the railway much higher than what Tan Zanee is building. It's railway, for example. And this is what a lot of critics of both Kinyada and Ruto have said is that there were much cheaper ways to build this railroad than the $6 billion that it took. We have to put ourselves back in 2014-2015. There weren't a lot of people offering that kind of money for Kenya to build the railway. So it's not like the Kenyans could choose from the Germans, the French, the Japanese, and then they go to the Chinese and they took the more expensive Chinese option. It was literally the Chinese or nothing at that time. And so, you know, that's part of the factor here. But my guess is that what Ruto's gonna try and hide is that it was a poorly drafted contract from the point of view of the Kenyans. And the benefits went primarily to the Chinese. That's my suspicion as to what's in that contract. I think there is to that. I think there is elements going to that sense why they don't want that to be released because the terms and the close of the contracts can be really one-sided as you mentioned. In the case of the SGO and it was built, let's not forget that it was not really a popular project on the ground because people were saying there is a truck line where trucks are using to go that way. The SGO is going to come and kill the truck business. It's going to not create employment, it's just going to create more unemployment in the region. So many people are not really happy about that. So when you add this element on the table, it's like, yes, you see this is why we hide to sacrifice all trucking business between Mumbai and Iversha just because of that. But I think there's also another thing that maybe there is a business element into those close confidentiality clauses because when you are a state like Kenya, a country like Kenya, you negotiate the loans that you take from China, you also owe the partners. You don't want other partners to know the level of concession you made so the one partner that you are not willing to do with others. Because it comes about paying back the loan, you are now in control of the narrative to say what am I going to tell my private credit in Washington, in London, in Paris and what I'm going to tell Beijing, how I can manage them. You're releasing this contract, you are basically giving all your other creditors element on the table to say, you know what, we saw the condition you get to the Chinese for that from now on, this is our baseline to negotiate with you from now on when you, but when you come to us for those kind of agreement, we don't want, we, it's going to be the base and our discussions. And I think this also is an element to say, nah, we are not willing to release it because basically we're going to expose ourselves to other creditors, other partners. That's exactly why they have the NDA clauses in there is to be able to protect their ability to negotiate with others. Also, let's go back to 2015 and the dream back then was not that the railway was going to end in Nivaasha. Back then the dream was that not only would the railway continue on to the Ugandan Bordeik-Kusumu, which by the way, it's now actually going to happen to go to the Ugandan Bordeik. Right. We have some issues on standard gauge meter gauge and some other issues there. But the dream back in the early 2010s was that we were looking at this vast map of railways across East Africa going all the way into the DRC into Zambia into Tanzania connecting all the way up even to South Sudan. There was this beautiful network of railways that hasn't happened. But where we are today is it starting to inch and piece together. Tanzania is building their SGR. Uganda is now going to build its, I think Uganda is on a meter gauge and this is going to be a little bit complicated, but they are going to connect the SGR to Uganda in Kusumu. And so we are starting to see the evolution of an East African railway network that was originally envisioned that the Chinese would build. The Chinese said, you know what, this probably isn't going to be very profitable for us so we backed out. But it is coming though. And so one could say that the six billion dollar investment that the Kenyans made in this railway was too expensive, was too faulty, was corrupt and whatnot. The only thing I want to bring to everybody's attention is that except for Japan rail, almost every other railway in the world loses money and is corrupt beyond imagination in many cases. Deutsche Rail, I think last year was somewhere north of 10 billion euros that it lost SNCF, loses money, Amtrak loses money, Brit Rail often is losing money, even they've privatized it, it's lost money. Railways by themselves are not very profitable ventures. And so the fact that they haven't made six billion dollars to repay this loan, to me does not mean that the railway is a failure because it's supposed to generate other economic activity around it. And this was the argument that China is put on the table when they refuse to extend financing support for the other part of the railway. Because they've come to realize that and it's that we're interesting to look into the contract. What was the promises and the premises of the Kenyans? They've put on the table to say this railway is going to be profitable. Because the Chinese middle realized that no, this thing is going nowhere. There's no business happening between a Yveshah and the board of Uganda. There's nothing really happening in terms of traction and everything. We don't see us adding more money into the project that's going to really generate to make it a business case for us to continue. And this is what is really happened with the Chinese head that a pretty funny moment when it comes to financing in Africa, they became smarter, they became more, more risk, a worse, more intelligent about how the risk environment is happening in Africa. They say, no, no, no, no, you need to make a stronger case for us to continue. That's why William Ruta has been struggling after three trips in Beijing, struggling to get, I need to say what we're going to put one more, one billion dollars on the table for that. And this is, I think, something that we're not always being attention to. But this, you said something that really for me is revealing on how our South African we've been failing into our approaching with China. In the 20 tens, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, all three of them had similar projects. All three of them were talking about this East African connection and all of that. But none of them negotiated as a group with China to say you know what we have here a project that makes sense regionally, that's going to produce money, that's going to generate development where we want you to be part of. They did not do that. Each of them went to China separately. Kenya, Tanzania for one portion, Uganda for one portion. And each of them in every country, China say in midway say you know what I'm stopping this, I'm pulling the plug. In compiler, China put the plug. I say you know what I'm not continuing. And you realize that you guys had a project, a regional project. Why didn't you go all together, sit all together, negotiate with China and come up with a project that's going to make sense. And financially it's going to have more support. But now today all of them are trying to find different financials for the project to be able to connect all of it. And Kenya for instance for the SGR, they went into a very complex financial architecture for private public partnership. Plus it told the last, the new phase of the SGR can from Neyvashit Kishumo. Yes. They told services on the railway to be able, that just tells you how much I say you know what I'm going to continue. But I'm going to be more prudent into the kind of project. And I think that it reveals us how we've been, we've been short-sighted. Many Africans come to a short sighted window, comes to those kind of infrastructure project with China. Yeah. So just to pick up on what Jero was saying there. So phase three of the SGR, which is what the Chinese or what the Kenyans rather were lobbying and Beijing for years to try to get the Chinese to finance through debt. The Chinese said, hey listen, you're struggling to pay back the debt already. We're not going to pile more debt on you. And we just don't believe that there's the density of population and business between Neyvashit Kishumo. This is one of the reasons why we've seen more SGR development in Nigeria than we have in Kenya because Nigeria with a 200 million plus population has the population density to fill those trains to eventually become profitable so they can repay the debt. And so the Chinese came, you know, for a long time to Mured, but finally Kenyatta, I mean Kenyatta, Ruto really wore them down and they came up with a public private partnership solution. Now, this is the billion dollars that you were talking about. You from the beginning have been very skeptical that Chinese will actually follow through. No, that was like, no. On this. So we'll have to see what happens. So next steps now, obviously phase three, that's going to be a public private partnership. But on the court case, the next step right now is whether or not Ruto will follow through and listen to the court of appeals to release the remaining loan contracts that have been secret, the detail, the China X and bank loans. On the Chinese side, Ambassador Gua Haien in Nairobi has not said anything. The embassy has not said anything nor has China X and bank. We don't expect them to say anything. At the end of the day, they are in no position to say anything regardless because this is the internal affairs of the Kenyan government and China is steadfast by saying we don't interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. So if Kenya releases the contracts, there you go. That's the way it is. So keep an eye out now for the release of these contracts. We'll be following this very closely. It doesn't look like Kenyan. media is going to be that interested in this. I suspect also, let's remember what happened this week in particular in Nairobi. Massive riots, somewhere about four or five people killed on the streets because of petrol prices that have gone up. This is of course due to the war in Iran and the restrictions on the straight-of-form moves and the tariffs that the Kenyan government was put on petrol. And so my guess is that this came at a time as you pointed out when people just aren't paying attention, which is probably the best gift that the court could have given to Ruto. Because as you said, there's going to be no public pressure. If we ask nine out of 10 people in Nairobi next week, did you hear about the quarter of appeals ruling? They're going to be like, what? No, I was focusing on the riots and I was focusing on 50 other things. And Arsenal, who is Arsenal, I think, was won, right? Is that it? I'm not an EPL fan, so. But I have a feeling that in Kenya, they were much more interested in what was happening. They were really-- English primarily, then, what came out of the court. OK, so we'll keep an eye on this. We think this is a very important story. It's really going to be a test of Kenyan governance. Will the president follow the court's orders? This is a very important test. And this is not really a Chinese issue. This is a Kenyan issue here. So let's move on. Very quickly now, Nijer and Benin. Another interesting ongoing saga, so very quickly, and I'll give just a high level. What was this started? What, 10 years ago, the Nijer Benin pipeline, when did they start building that? I think it started 10 years 2014. 2014? Yeah, it was the mid-2010s again. Yeah. It was around the mid-2010s. And at the time, this is the China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC, was building a massive pipeline from Nijer that went-- Nijer, of course, is landlocked. And it was building it all the way to the coast. At the end of the port of Semi in Benin. And now, here's what's interesting about this, was at the same time that they started building this, is when a lot of the insurgency started happening in the Sahel, and it became a very turbulent era. And yet the pipeline nonetheless persisted and made its way through until it stopped. Bring us up to date. So basically, the pipeline finished, inaugurated, lunch, exports started to flow from the Agadam field where CNPCs are is operating down the port of Semi. The attention, of course, between Benin and Nijer. The tension came about when the coup happened in Nijer. When General Tiani took power against President Bazun, it was two years ago in 2024. That when the tension began. Because at the same time, the ECOAS had put sanction over Nijer, and it was an international sanction over Nijer. So it just became very a very difficult situation. But the issue here was not about Benin and Nijer. It's between Nijer and the Chinese company, the Chinese CNPC on the ground. Because what happened? Because international sanction, company left, all the Western company left, French company left. Chinese company remained the only one on the ground operating and investing in a product. So Nijer started to ask money because they were short on cash. They say, you know what? Can you give us a 300 million dollars at first as a pre-payment of an oil export China paid? And then it became a kind of rocket system that took place. Because we had a situation where the CNPCs are very in a weak position. You already put almost $4 billion in this old project. You cannot just live and go. You cannot just park and go. So you find yourself in a context where the Nijer look around, no other companies here, no other countries here. You are here. You want to keep it so you have to pay up. So the tension started to build up C2024 with CNPC. Chinese executive being sent back to Beijing. Chinese project being shut down, threatens of nationalization. All of that just became very difficult. And to that, you add the fact that you had attacks from rebel attack on the pipeline. It just made the cost so much difficult. So export it stopped. CNPC said one. I'm gonna stop to that. But they generated them and the money and all of that. So the negotiations started in June 2025 in Beijing. Back in fourth in Nijer and the CNPC in Beijing. They're funny, they're funny and agreement where the government is going to join the company that is managing the pipeline. They're gonna create almost a thousand, almost 500 to 1000 new jobs only for Nijerians. They're going to outsource only for Nigerian companies. They really gain a lot of kind of adventure from CNPC to be allowed to export again. And CNPC promised, I think, $1 billion investment from now to 2029. Of course, those details are coming from the Nigerians officials. And as you can expect, as we've been saying that most of the time here, when those kind of announcements have made only from one side, you have to be careful on the details because most of the time, they tend to exaggerate what they've been, what they agreed on and what they did not get. On CNPC, you're gonna have to wait on the details exactly on what was agreed upon. But this is basically what's happened in Niger right now. But the case in Nigerian also reveals something that we don't always pay attention. I've mentioned that during one of my conversation Beijing, that as much as China is present in powerful many of those African countries, China is very vulnerable. It's very vulnerable to host countries, you know, WIMS plan and project because, you know, in the context where you had already put $4 billion on the table, a country that can say, "You know, I'm gonna shut it down." You can go to international courts, but by the time you go to court, you already lost access to your asset and it's going to be a long process. And this is the thing that Chinese company are becoming more and more aware of and in Beijing people are telling me, the risk assessment has become something very serious that they're really putting on the table. Yeah, that's right. Their tolerance for risk is changed. Exactly. And I think that the Niger-Banning pipeline came into this. So remember that the Chinese, you know, 15 years ago when they first started coming into Africa, were in the Sudan, back then it was one country and then South Sudan, they were aggressive in Mali, they were in Libya, they were in obviously the Sahel. All of those countries presented huge problems for them for the state-owned enterprises. And they started packing up out of the Sudan's and they put CNPC, put billions into Sudan. And so they just kind of said, you know what? It's sunk costs were done were out of here. And I kind of saw this with the Nishapanin kind of problem as well that they just grew weary of it all. And at some point were just like, okay. And you know, when I lived in Kinshasa, there was a story and I've told you this, that there's a saying that the Congolese told me, they said, you know, if you pass by a fruit-bearing tree, you might as well kick it just to see what comes out of it. And CNPC at the time was the fruit-bearing tree for the Nigerians, you know, and they just kind of kept kicking it just to see what came out of it. So now there's a different urgency in 2026 than there was maybe a year ago or even six months ago. Yeah. The Chinese equation may be different. So let me just kind of paint a picture here. I live in Southeast Asia. We started getting our first shipments of Angolan oil here. So if you're an African oil producer, guess what? It's money time right now. Exactly. And you had Dengote, you were happy. You're a Dengote, you know, who's the Nigerian refiner, you know, refinery god now in Africa. But the Chinese may now be looking to move back into African oil, to diversify away from their reliance on gulf, oil and gas. And so this pipeline becomes more important than it was maybe two years ago. And that, I don't know if there's any, if there's any correlation between the signing that took place this week and the events that had been happening for the past three months in the Gulf, probably not. But the timing is good if they can start sourcing energy from more places, particularly in Africa. For me, I can anticipate that the Nigerian is official leverage that. They're kind of also maybe leverage that to make them understand, you know what? We are as here in Niger, in Angola, in Nigeria. We've become, I mean, we are still stable. We are still open to you. And I think you should, you know, creating more employment here, adding up, allowing us to get into the project. For example, one of the things they got from these agreements like the Nigerian government is now to join the company that's managing the pipeline by 45%. They're now becoming a shareholders where they went. They got nothing. Now they get 45%. So the other details we don't know, but I can anticipate that that also became part of that the leverage of the conversation they put on the table. But when I was invaging, someone was telling me that, you know what, the CNPC was really in the context where less negotiate, let's talk, let's find an agreement to make it work because they understood that it's not really worth going into a fight, but at the same time as we mentioned, they became just smarter. The KSA, let's become much more smart in a way that we approach these countries in the global south now. A lot of people ask why the Nigerians, not Nigerians, the Nigerians don't export more oil to China. And one of the things that I've been told from oil experts is that the type of crude that Nigeria produces is not consistent with the refining capacity that the Chinese have. Whereas Angolan, crude, and others are very much tuned for that. And so it's the thickness of the crude that comes out of Nigeria. But we are going to see more Ugandan oil come out with the new East Africa crude oil pipeline that Cino is building with total energies. Also the Chinese may be financing a $4.5 billion refinery in Angola. So I think now in this new reality that we're in with the Strait of Formus, which by the way is not going to go back to the way it was. The straight-off or moose now has been altered forever. And the Chinese, though they're benefiting more than most other countries who are getting oil through, I don't think want to be vulnerable like this again. And so we may see a return to the future, or back to the future here, when African countries accounted for 30 to 40% of the top 10 oil producers for China. Very interesting little factoid that we covered in our other show, Brazil jumped ahead of Saudi Arabia now as China's second largest oil supplier in April. Did not have that on my bingo card for 2026. So things are in motion. And so I think this really plays well for the Nigerians and the Beninese. Also at points, Jiro, to a growing strategic interest of Western Africa. We've talked about the Simandu mine in Guinea, the leaky port in Nigeria. Now we've got the Benin port for oil. It's really starting to become much more important. And there are lithium deals being done in Mali as well. And there's lithium refining deals being done in Nigeria. In Mali, yes, we have Gulamina project in Mali. We have Chinese gold mining project in Mali. Zijin mining has been acquiring a staggering amount of gold mining project in Kodivwa in Ghana. Interestingly, from American and Canadian, companies and that just really very interesting. So we see a lot of attractions now taking place in the West and Africa, which China is really now ramping up its presence in various ways. Okay, let's round out our conversation. You were just in Beijing. I'm on my way to Beijing, really looking forward to the conversations that I'm going to have. But we want to follow up on some of the chats that you've had. And your trip there coincided with the announcement of the 53 countries benefiting from zero tariffs entry into the Chinese market. And so that's been a topic of conversation that a lot of folks in the academic, the diplomatic and the policy space are asking about what does this mean. And the Chinese themselves now are apparently taking some actions to help African government to best take advantage of this. Maybe share a few of those insights that you got while you were in Beijing. Yes, so when I was in Beijing, I had the opportunity to talk with a few African stakeholders and a member of the diplomatic corps, not as much as I would like. I wanted them, but I spoke with a few of them. It was really interesting. First of all, as you can imagine, the conversation in the tone in Beijing among diplomatic circles like the zero trade policy. What would that mean for African countries, for African exporters, the opportunity presented and all of that? And of course, Chinese media were covering that. The first export of pineapple coming from East Africa. We see a lot of those kind of coverage of media coverage about African export to China that were taking place. But one thing that was also taking place was the fact that China, foreign foreign minister and China custom had organized a four days retreat for African diplomats. And they also invited, they also required African diplomats to bring some custom official from their own country to come to Beijing for four days for retreat, where the Chinese foreign ministry and the Chinese custom and Chinese minister of commerce are going to teach African custom and diplomats how to use and how to take advantage of Chinese custom. They say, we understand the complexity of the process. When they're still not filing those process can be really treat very complex. But we want to teach you how to do it. We want to teach you how to learn to do it. Because at the end, no one wants to want to say, like, you know, China is giving us that but we did not receive, we did not know how to use. Because that was one of the criticism that many African diplomats were giving to China. So, you know, you launched the SIPs, you took us into the training for the SIPs but we didn't get much of feedback. What was the SIPs? The payment system. The Chinese payment system. Across water interbank payment system. Exactly. Say, you know, and then they say, you know, we're going to try as much as possible to really teach you how to use it. And I was telling my diplomat friends say, how many Africans have brought their own custom people from Africa? Not many of them. I say, what's the chance that when they're going to go back, they're going to go back and train now and share the information. They say, this is how we need to use it. I'm not really sure. So, but you can see from Beijing, when I was talking even to an African who was there, was really part of the African circle training African diplomat about China. He was telling me, you can see a lot of traction coming from Chinese official, really trying as much as possible to get things done with Africans. But the challenge is on the African side, I don't know how much I was serious about this engagement and what the work that we do, we put on the table to be able to take advantage of that. Yeah. I mean, one or two trainings are good, but nowhere near enough. And there has to be a part of a commitment of ongoing training. And again, the timing of this comes just as the same African diplomats are going to start getting together to think about what do they want to put on the FOKAC agenda. That's the Forum on China Africa Cooperation agenda. The 10th FOKAC is going to happen next year in Congo, Brazil, and it seems to me that incorporating a whole track on this type of skills and training capacity would be very important. That, you know, how to best take advantage of it. Again, I've said two things should be the focus of FOKAC next year and forget everything else. How to facilitate more commerce through the AFC FDA. So more infrastructure, more logistics, taking advantage of Chinese expertise in that. And then how to best take advantage of the export opportunities that China is presenting. Pretty much drop everything else in my view because those are going to be the job creators. Exactly. I mean, African governments have never listened to us so I don't expect them to start now. But I think if you have a very focused FOKAC, rather than this, you know, 50-page document that covers everything under the moon in every kind of detail of every part of society and the importance of the blue economy, the green economy, the importance of, you know, the digital economy, all these different things. Trade and infrastructure and facilitating intra-Africa trade and China-Africa trade. Those would be my focuses for the FOKAC. Did you get a sense from when you're in your conversations with African diplomats that they had a grasp of the opportunity? And I just, I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean that in some senses, diplomats are not always the best people for this kind of work because they're not business people. They're not farmers. They're not in the phytosanitary business. You know, they're in the policy business, the social science business, the foreign policy community. Do you get the sense that these diplomats really are the best people to be the intermediaries between African business and exporters and the Chinese commerce department? And I think that's why the Chinese wanted to have customs people from Africa to also be part of their conversation. And they have the technicians who are able to provide insight to understand the needy greedy of such process. Of course, you had the diplomatic reaction, the, you know, what you know, it's positive. We are going to take advantage of it. It's going to be elaborate, but this is an opportunity. But the sense of like, we do understand what is in play here was not really that. And this is even just, I had that sad confirmation like, we don't really take our China relationship seriously enough to understand everything that's what is in play here for us to take advantage of that. But I've come to a maybe a pessimistic view on if you're going to take advantage of that. I don't believe that it's going to benefit our countries as overall. I believe that exporters, businessmen and individual businessmen in Africa are going to take advantage because they may not need to want to become large exporters or great providers of Chinese fruit and all of that to China. But at least they're going to take advantage of a huge market. The portion, the share of like acts may be raised by two, three percent. Those three percent raised are going to make a difference for farmers in South Africa, farmers in Kenya, farmers in Zimbabwe. But when you look at the largest scale of the trade between Zimbabwe and China, I don't think it's going to make a change. It's not going to make a massive dent. But it's going to make a dent for individual businessmen, individual farmers, individual actors in that straight space. I think for them, getting just a smidge of like 0, 0, 1 percent of China market, it's good enough to say, you know what, I'm making more money. But for the countries in the large, I don't think that's going to be really a game changer at all in the and balance of China-Africa trade. Well, that's kind of a somewhat a beep note. A little bit, 0.01 percent of the Chinese market is still a huge amount of money. So let's hope that people can benefit from it. We'll keep our eye on all of these stories over the next few weeks. These are all developing stories to see how they progress. Certainly these conversations that African stakeholders are having both on the free trade or the duty free access into the Chinese market and the preparations for Focac are going to be a theme throughout the rest of this year. We're going to see a lot more coverage of this, the Chinese and African media are really celebrating a lot of this. So this new shipments of stone fruit, then new shipments of figs, then blueberries, all of them entering in. What I do like, which is interesting, is how they are pointing out that say, for example, the profit margin on cut flowers, for example, is oftentimes just 4 percent. The tariff was about 4 to 5 percent. So all of a sudden now, Kenyan cut flowers going into China are more profitable than they were. So again, little changes like this can have a very big impact and there is a lot of excitement but as you've pointed out, how do you best take advantage of this? This is a huge opportunity and it's interesting that there's a lot of excitement about selling more to China than selling to Europe in the United States because the United States is no longer a duty free access because a Goa, even though it's technically still in force, our friend Judd Devermont, who's a well-known Africa scholar in the United States, reminds us that a Goa today includes the Liberation Day tariffs. So it's not free trade, it's not duty free. So we'll keep an eye on that and also the Dizier Benin story is going to keep developing and then of course what's happening in Kenya. And then hopefully next week, Cobus is back, Cobus was on the road in London this week so we're traveling quite a bit these days and he got to see a lot of our old friends of the podcast at a conference in London and we're going to hopefully get some of them to come back on the show. But Jerville, thank you very much again for your great reporting and your great analysis this week. Always wonderful to see you and good that you're back home. I'm sure your wife and son are happy that you're back after a nice trip to Beijing and then I'll be going to Beijing and I'll share some of my insights and reflections. It's going to happen in a couple of weeks so I'll be there and then looking forward to seeing everybody who's reached out. When I put a call out on the show a couple of weeks ago that I was going to be coming to town. I was kind of surprised how many people kind of reached out. So we have a lot of people listening to us from Beijing. We have a lot of followers in Beijing so that was kind of exciting. So okay, well that'll do it. Remember that if you want to support the work that Jichou, Cobus, Maria, Lucy and the entire team at CGSP around the world are doing the best way to do it is to go to China GlobalSouth.com/subscribe. Subscriptions start at $19 and then if you are a student or a teacher email me, Eric at China GlobalSouth.com and I'll send you a half off discount link for just 10 bucks a month. I always like to say it's cheaper than a Starbucks run and it'll make you a lot smarter. But at the end of the day, I mean this is what we're finding when we talk with diplomats and ambassadors and we talk to different stakeholders around the world. We are the largest source of information on this subject. Nobody else does the volume of work that we're doing at the speed that we're doing. And so if you're in the China space, even just a little bit, you're going to want to read and follow the work that the great team at CGSP is doing. Once again, China GlobalSouth.com/subscribe. Okay, that'll do it for this edition. Jichou, Cobus and I will be back again next week with another episode of the China in Africa podcast. Until then, thank you so much for listening and for watching. The discussion continues online. Follow the China GlobalSouth project on Blue Sky and X, a China GS project or on YouTube, a China GlobalSouth. And share your thoughts on today's show or head over to our website at chinaglobosouth.com where you can subscribe to receive full access to more than 5,000 articles and podcasts. Once again, that's China GlobalSouth.com. [Music]